


A Hero Lies In You

by rane_ab



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Anthropomorphic, M/M, scientific inaccuraties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:34:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rane_ab/pseuds/rane_ab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur was still in his differentiation stage himself, back then; he remembers being only vaguely aware of the other cell, until suddenly a dendrite was shoved (quite rudely) into his personal space. (In which Merlin and Arthur are misbehaving braincells.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hero Lies In You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for one of the bonus challenges of the 2009 Summer Pornathon.

In the year 2073, on a day coddled by warm sunlight and friendly laughter, Mary slips away from her parents, wanders into the woods, giggling, running after the playful butterfly that had wanted to share her lunch. 

When the world shifts, there is no sudden lurch, no tremor that would send her to her knees.

She blinks; when she opens her eyes, she’s in a cave.

She shivers.

~

They tell her there was no magic, no monster (liar, liar), that the cells in her brain are to blame. They tell her the cells - row upon row of them – carry messages through her mind, her body, whispering them to each other across small chasms like an endless game of Telephone. Except some of them aren’t whispering, they’re shouting, loud and fast. That’s what confused the rest of your brain cells, you see, dear?

It’s all right, love, we’re going to tell them to be quiet.

Mary (who gets shushed about thirty times a day) stomps her foot and tells them they’re _her_ little cells, thank you very much, and if they want to have some fun, then let them.

~

Arthur is not well pleased. He was just having a nice nap when Merlin started rubbing against him. Again. He wonders at the fact that anyone could be quite this obnoxious and regrets, not for the first time, that he didn’t push Merlin away with more conviction when he had the chance. 

But he was still in his differentiation stage himself, back then; he remembers being only vaguely aware of the other cell, until suddenly a dendrite was shoved (quite rudely) into his personal space. Until one day, he finally saw: tendrils fanning out across the gulf between them, grown abnormally long just so they could reach Arthur, who was annoyed and not impressed at all. 

He pointedly refused to speak to the intruder, as a matter of fact, rather more interested in the pretty cell to his right, which was growing towards him with slightly less enthusiasm (but one did not pay attention to such trifling details). 

And then there was a touch to one of his terminals – and Arthur, Arthur may have been confused for a moment. Who wouldn’t have been, what with Merlin’s sudden, idiotic chatter, electric charges running over Arthur’s membrane, making him shiver all over. By the time he recovered enough to tell Merlin to keep his tendrils to himself, the connection between them had already settled. _Idiot_ , Arthur groused. Merlin telegraphed four letters back, spat them carefully into Arthur’s body, over and over again, until Arthur was trembling (with anger, of course).

Now, though, Merlin’s mouthing electric kisses, which Arthur can never quite resist, across the tiny spot. He can feel Merlin smirking as Arthur’s foul mood ebbs away; he presses back, kisses wet and open, and Merlin moans. 

It’s easy, this, so easy and familiar, Merlin jerking against him, increasingly desperate charges flowing between them, and after a while he can’t help it: he opens his ion channels wide while Merlin hums into his body, happy and smiling, and oh. Oh. Arthur can feel the tension in him mounting, snapping his axon taut and making his terminals itch, floating in the empty space between them, and then Merlin’s next charge hits him, _Arthur, Arthur, Arthur_ , and the wave crests through him, wiping his mind completely blank as his release fires from him in bursts. 

He can feel Merlin opening his receptors wide to welcome it, savouring every tiny molecule as he groans into Arthur’s body, tightening; Arthur shouts _yes, fuck, Merlin_ , and then Merlin is shuddering, coming and coming and coming, and it’s all Arthur can do not to rip himself lose from the cells around him to wrap himself around Merlin – kisses him lazily instead.

~

It’s a new treatment, they tell her, it’ll break the connection between the misbehaving cells, see? So they can’t be naughty anymore.

Like when me and Ellen talk too much in class and Miss makes us sit apart?

Yes, like that, they smile.

Mary decides she doesn’t like this treatment at all.

 

[THE WOEFULLY TRAGIC END.]

 

Well, until the year 2208, when they are reborn in the brain of an arsehole dictator with a penchant for world domination and a dead physician. Arthur and Merlin enthusiastically make the evil man black out at a rather inconvenient moment, and he spends the rest of his life rotting in a cell, where they ‘forget’ to treat him.

And they live happily ever after.


End file.
